Follow the fragrance of cumin, cilantro, cinnamon and chilies to discover B.C.’s most dynamic dining scene
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
We’re standing in the parking lot of a Surrey strip mall just like countless others in B.C.’s second biggest city and I’m not, truth be told, entirely sure where we are.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
But Discover Surrey’s new Culinary Spice Trail has led us here, and the aroma of ginger and turmeric and chilies lingers in the air, so I know something delicious is in store.
Like the Dumpling Trail in Richmond, the self-guided Spice Trail is designed to entice diners to a neighbourhood and cuisine they might be unfamiliar with, or even intimidated by. It was developed by Ange Chew, Discover Surrey’s executive director, who years earlier helped create the Asian Dining Program for Tourism Richmond and who’s met me for today’s journey.
“This was all here, but people don’t realize how robust it is and how vibrant it is,” Chew says, noting that the Spice Trail traverses all six of Surrey’s neighbourhoods (North Surrey, Guildford, Cloverdale, Newton, Fleetwood, South Surrey).
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
There are about 30 stops along the trail, which just launched a few weeks ago, and Chew hopes to add more this fall, along with “sub trails” focusing on, say, chai, momos or samosas.
Although the trail includes cuisine from the Caribbean, Latin America and Southeast Asia, most of the restaurants represent the Indian subcontinent — not surprising, given that about a third of Surrey’s 500,000-plus population is of South Asian background.
What might be surprising, though, especially to diners used to the curry-in-a-hurry menus of many Indo-Canadian restaurants, is the regional differences between, for instance, the tandoor-grilled dishes of Punjab, the street food of Mumbai, and fiery fare of Kerala.
“I love that there is a real regionality happening in Surrey,” says Raj Thandhi, the “Pink Chai” lifestyle blogger who has also joined us for today’s movable feast. “It just speaks to how Surrey is going to become a real hub for South Asian cuisine. I feel like we’re going to become the next London.”
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
She adds: “If you’re a foodie and you want to learn about Indian food, this is the place to come. I think people are ready to move on from butter chicken and samosas.”
We start at Kerala Kitchen in North Surrey, where chef Sujith raj Rajasekharan celebrates the cuisine of the South Indian state. He previously cooked for Fairmont’s Jasper Park Lodge and Hotel Vancouver, and brings a refined skill to Kerala’s spicy, vegetable-forward cuisine.
We start with a dosa, a thin rolled crepe made from fermented lentils and rice. You can also enjoy dosas stuffed with meat and veg, but we’re trying to pace ourselves here. It is massive, crisp and tender and savoury, served with tomato chutney fragrant with ginger and coconut.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
We follow that with some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. It’s marinated in chilies, tamarind and other spices, shatteringly crisp and perfectly addictive. “This is our staple food in Kerala. It’s like a street food,” chef tells us. We’re off to a splendid start.
Next we head to Surrey Super Market in the Payal Business Centre. It’s bright and airy, with a cornucopia of tiny purple eggplants, snaky jade-green cucumbers, and all sorts of intriguingly plump, spiky and knobbly produce you rarely see in Vancouver markets.
The freezers are filled with prepared foods, including a line of snacks from Surrey-based Nanak Foods. There are bins of nuts and lentils, displays of baked goods, and shelves filled with cooking gear.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
I’m instantly smitten by the adorably tiny rolling pins for making dosas.
Most of all, there are spices: whole and ground, single or in blends, in bins, in bags and in cartons, spices you know and spices you’ve never heard of, all at ridiculously low spices.
“We use spices in so many different formats,” Thandhi says. “There is something entirely different about roasting whole spices and grinding them. But then if someone doesn’t want to grind their spices, we have some options.”
It’s lunchtime, so we head over to Newton and Chacha’s Tandoor & Grill, a dazzling modern Punjabi restaurant operated by Harchet Kalra. “In Punjabi, chacha is your father’s younger brother,” Thandhi explains. The uncle in this instance is chef Narinder Kalra.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
We start with a round of gol gappay shots, a Delhi specialty of puffed and stuffed crackers called pooris, served with a shot of mint water. We drizzle the mint water into the poori and eat it all in one bite. It’s crispy and tender, salty and sour all at once, and Thandhi explains that distinctive flavour combination is what’s known as “chatpatti.”
“That to me is the flavour of Indian street food,” she says.
We follow with delicately spiced fish pakoras in a featherlight batter, then keema, a ground goat meat stew slow-cooked in a savoury sauce, and chewy, soft rumali roti. It’s a carnival of flavours and textures, and the only thing stopping us from ordering more is knowing that we have at least one more stop to make.
Meanwhile, Thandhi tells us about the culinary trends making Surrey such a global destination for South Asian food.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
“One of my favourite cuisines in Surrey is Calcutta-style Indochinese,” she says. But there’s also a huge Bengali bakery culture and all sorts of influences from the metropolitan cities of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. “There’s a different calibre coming to Surrey.”
All day we’ve been talking about momos and we’re finally going to try them. Momos are steamed dumplings that originated in Nepal and Tibet, but have become a popular street food all over India — and in the last year or so, all over Surrey.
We reach Spice of Nepal in Newton just in time for happy hour, so we order a round of beer and three different types of momos: simply steamed chicken ones, crisp paneer-filled momos baked in a tandoor oven, and chicken jhol momos in a tomato-cilantro sauce.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
The plump little bundles look a lot like baozi or gyoza and have a wonderful sort of Indochinese fusion thing going on, all tender and delicately spiced. They are perhaps the highlight of a day filled with culinary highlights.
I immediately start planning a return visit.
That happens just a couple of weeks later, when I follow the Spice Trail to My Shanti, Vikram Vij’s glittering South Surrey restaurant.
This is a good place to end your journey, but it’s also a good place to begin it. Not only is Vij the consummate host, but the menu is thoughtfully defined by the region each dish comes from.
We settle in under a bower of grape vines and sip almond-scented cocktails topped with silver leaf while nibbling meat-filled samosas and spicy Bombay-style “gunpowder” shrimp. As the sun sets, we follow that with Kashmiri lamb in fenugreek cream curry and duck biryani from Hyderabad.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
It’s delicious, but not nearly as delicious as realizing there are at least 25 more stops on the trail, and some 500 more restaurants tucked away in Surrey’s suburban strip malls. Best of all, there’s no need to get on plane to experience this world of flavour.
As the Spice Trail’s founder Ange Chew says, “It’s what’s in your own back yard.”
• To begin your journey along Discover Surrey’s self-guided Culinary Spice Trail, visit discoversurreybc.com/spice-trail. You will find a list of participating businesses, interactive map and links to stay-and-dine packages.
• If you want someone else to do all the planning for you, Chew on This Tasty Tours offers an adults-only Spice Trail Tour that visits five different locations. Cost is $119 per person; chewonthistastytours.com.
• To follow blogger Raj Thandhi’s culinary adventures, visit pinkchailiving.com or follow her at @pinkchai on Instagram.
Source: vancouversun.com
